One Thought Per Sentence

Seth Mnookin’s piece on Bloomberg News, in this month’s Vanity Fair, quotes from the company’s stylebook, “The Bloomberg Way,” saying that Bloomberg banned the word “but” from its stories because it required readers “to deal with conflicting ideas in the same sentence.” It’s a little hard to tell from the context whether this rule is still in effect or not, but (there I go again) I can guarantee I will now be looking for “but”s or “however”s in every Bloomberg story I read.

Another interesting tidbit from the piece is that before the release of anticipated news—payroll numbers, earnings reports, and so on—Bloomberg reporters write three versions of the same story, reflecting the three possible outcomes (the news was better than, worse than, or the same as expected). From the perspective of getting the news out quickly, there’s clearly a logic to this approach. But from the perspective of actually understanding why the news was better than or worse than expectations, or drilling down into what the numbers actually say, it seems a bit limited.

James Surowiecki is the author of “The Wisdom of Crowds” and writes about economics, business, and finance for the magazine.